Monthly Archives: May 2003

First, a couple of pierced pet pix. Let me emphasise that this is a natural hole (not made by the owner!), and that the ring was just put in for the photo so she wouldn't try and rip it out:

The “tattoos” (ahem, marker drawings) were submitted along with demand for membership:

Some quick news… I'm assuming everyone knows about the well executed commando-style terrorist atttacks in Saudi Arabia (more). It's no surprise that this US-targetting attack (more) is being blamed on al Qaeda (more) and even bin Laden personally (more). As the US pulls its diplomats out (more), Saudi Arabia also warns that al Qaeda is beginning to stockpile significant weapons in the Gulf (more), and thanks to a little assistance from the USA, al Qaeda quite likely now is building up a nuclear arsenal (more)

On Sunday, the Washington Post wrote the obituary for the United States' effort to find Saddam Hussein's alleged weapons of mass destruction. "Frustrated, U.S. Arms Team to Leave Iraq," read the headline, confirming what has become an embarrassing truth — that the central rationale for the invasion and occupation of oil-rich Iraq was in fact one of history's great frauds.

Not that anybody — anybody that can stop it that is — cares. Even after this massive deceit, coupled with domestic fraud and civil rights abuses, the Bush regime continues to enjoy massive support in the US, presumably because of its effective propaganda campaign branding any dissenting voices as treasonous. Now let's get back to paying the defense contractors that put Bush into power more money for more “usable” nukes (more)!

So I've spent the day messing around with the stupid .NET Visual Studio crap. Maybe I'm spoiled, but this ridiculous bloated piece of junk is really annoying to work with. Not only that, but they've so obfuscated the guts of the languages that if your background is low-level programming you totally lose it. It's as if they're trying to convert programmers into software choreographers or something.

If I wanted to have a better day I should have just rubbed dog biscuits on my crotch and let Leeta bite my balls off. Hell, I'd rather take a bath in lard and then play slippery-slide down the driveway than keep coding in this scam to buy overpowered computers to run poorly designed software.

I don't know if folks have been following this story about the redistricting fight that's going on in Texas right now, but it's pretty scary in my opinion. I'll try and quickly summarize what it's about.

Intro: Why districts matter

As you recall, Bush lost the overall majority in the most recent election, but still won the Presidency. This is because voting is tabulated by district and then those districts “vote” to make the final decision; variations in dictrict borders can dramatically alter the final outcome, especially in close elections.

In the example below, I've drawn a voting pattern that represents an overall vote of 8 Republicans and 10 Democrats, split into three voting districts. In the layout on the left, it results in a 2:1 victory for the Democrats, but in the example on the right it results in a 2:1 victory for the Republicans. Same votes, massively different outcome.

What's Going On

The Republican government in Texas is seeking to restructure the districts in order to shift the current congressional delegation from a 17:15 Democrat majority to a 10:22 Republican majority. Because the Texas senate is a Republican majority, they can push this through without the Democrats being able to do much about it, essentially manipulating the process in order to guarantee continued power with or without true public support.

However, in order for a vote to be valid, at least 2/3 of senators must cast their votes. In order to block this from happening, the Democrats have simply walked out and are refusing to vote. As a retaliation, the Republicans have called for all dissenting Democrats to be arrested and put in prison.

How messed up is that? If you are a politician and you object to the ruling party screwing over you and your constituents, they can actually arrest you? Anyway, a couple more recent links on this story (although you can go to Google News and type in “Texas Quorum” for more):

Because the 75th Exploitation Task Force (the US group in charge of all WMD searches in Iraq) is finding nothing they're winding down the search without evidence to present (more). Now, I should remind people that Powell and Blair and everyone else claimed that they had solid evidence that not only did the Iraqis have hundreds of tons of banned munitions, but that they were launch ready (remember Powell's scare that a strike could be launched within 45 minutes?)… Not only that but Powell gave specific evidence and listed specific sites, none of which show even a trace of WMD residue… Anyway, some quotes from the team:

"I don't think we'll find anything"

- Capt. Tom Baird

"[Task force leaders] no longer think we're going to find chemical rounds sitting next to a gun... That's what we came here for, but we're past that."

"We thought we would be much more gainfully employed, or intensively employed, than we were..."

- Cmdr. David Beckett

Many people are claiming that this shortfall should have been obvious; after all, the mainstream intelligence agencies did not agree with the Bush regime's premise on WMDs — they pointed out that the intelligence did not in fact support that conclusion, but, in response to getting intelligence that didn't match their political goals, “The Cabal” (the new US government, described by the CIA as “crazed” and “on a mission from God”) simply created its own intelligence agency that would do politics first and intelligence second (more).

"Rumsfeld set up his own intelligence agency because he didn't like the intelligence he was getting."

- Larry Korb Council on Foreign Relations

"Their methods are vicious... The politicisation of intelligence is pandemic, and deliberate disinformation is being promoted. They choose the worst-case scenario on everything and so much of the information is fallacious."

- Vince Cannistraro former CIA chief of counter-terrorism

Do check out that article linked above the quotes; it lists in detail how intelligence was manipulated, misrepresented, and even forged in order to trick the US people into supporting this war — maybe that all should help explain why the US continues to block UN inspectors from entering Iraq (more). It's also important to listeto what Garth Whitty, a former UN inspector from the first wave, points out in regard to the fact that most of the Iraqi military and nuclear power sites were looted long before the US ever got there:

"It means the weapons would now be proliferating, which is exactly what the war was meant to stop."

Villagers in Iraq are suffering from radiation sickness (more), and at least seven nuclear sites have been looted (more). While these sites did not contain bombs or direct weaponry, they did contain an enormity of technical documents as well as nuclear fuel. As you know, Iraq is now largely under the control of religious extremists sympathetic to the cause of al Qaeda and other larger terrorist groups who are seeking to target America… And guess what — now we know they have all the supplies they need to create dirty nukes.

But don't worry, Bush's buddies are getting richer all the time (more)!

I almost don't know why I bother mentioning this, but this ridiculous tax cut of Bush's is getting more and more support from the US mainstream (more) — up ten percent in the last two weeks. Now, if you're rich and actually have dividend earning stocks, you will save some money; Bush's buddies will be saving millions a year, and the average top 1% of the population will save well over $10,000… But how much does the bottom 80% of America save? Less than thirty dollars (more, MORE).

It's very weird watching people cheer the rulers who are screwing them over, but I suppose history has seen it happen over and over and over.

The next election is the deciding one I suppose; if the Cabal is put back into power, I can't see how it doesn't herald the end of the United States, and possibly more. My father said to me a few days ago, “I envy you… These are going to be amazing times to live through, watching a great civilization crumble.”